£ 
49 


UC-NRLF 


B    3    111 


WENDELL 


F£B  28 


VRY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

GIFT   OF  - 


Class 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

A  Centennial  Oration 

Delivered  at  Park  Street  Church,  Boston 

November  28,  1911 


By     v 

Wendell  Phillips  Stafford 

Associate  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
District  of  Columbia 


Published  by  the 
NATIONAL  ASSOCIATION  FOR  THE  ADVANCEMENT 

OF  COLORED  PEOPLE 
20  VESEY  STREET,  NEW  YORK 


W.  B.  CLARKE  COMPANY 
26-28  TREMONT  STREET,  BOSTON 


s  7 


y 


WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

BORN  NOVEMBER  29,  1811 
DIED  FEBRUARY  2,  1884 


The  Centenary  of  the  Birth  of  WENDELL  PHILLIPS  was 
impressively  celebrated  by  a  public  meeting  at  Park  Street 
Church,  Boston,  on  the  evening  of  November  28,  1911, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  National  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Colored  People.  Moorfield  Storey,  Esq., 
President  of  the  Association,  occupied  the  chair  and  intro 
duced  the  orator  of  the  occasion,  Judge  Stafford,  of  Wash 
ington,  District  of  Columbia,  a  namesake  of  Mr.  Phillips, 
and  peculiarly  qualified  by  inheritance,  training,  and  sym 
pathy  to  do  justice  to  his  subject.  His  address,  delivered 
with  rare  eloquence  and  charm,  made  a  profound  impression 
on  his  audience,  and  was  felt  to  be  so  noble  and  adequate  a 
tribute  to  the  great  reformer  that  there  has  been  an  urgent 
request  for  its  publication.  The  generosity  of  friends  has 
made  this  possible,  and  will  be  gratefully  appreciated  by  all 
to  whom  the  opportunity  of  reading  the  oration  is  thus 
afforded.  It  has  seemed  fitting,  in  this  connection,  to  re 
print  from  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  in  which  it  first  appeared 
more  than  twenty  years  ago,  Judge  Stafford's  fine  poem  on 
Wendell  Phillips,  which  has  an  equal  claim  to  preservation 
with  his  masterly  oration. 

To  Judge  Stafford  himself  the  Association  is  deeply  in 
debted  for  his  generously  rendered  service  on  this  occasion, 
and  for  his  steadfast  sympathy  and  support  in  the  work  to 
which  it  is  dedicated. 


228722 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

From  a  photograph  by  J.  W.  Black,  about  1875 


... 

«  •  ••• 

-* 


•»  :    *. :« 

•  *>•••  • 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

A  hundred  years  ago  tomorrow  Wendell  Phillips 
was  born.    We  have  assembled  tonight  to  pay  our  * 
tribute  to  his  memory — one  of  the  purest  patriots,  1 
one  of  the  soundest  and  farthest-sighted  statesmen,  (^ 
probably  the  greatest  orator,  and  certainly  the  great-   I 
est  tribune  of  the  people,  the  New  World  has  pro-,/ 
duced.    In  other  cities  men  are  doing  the  same.    But 
we  are  happy  above  all  the  rest  in  the  place  of  our 
meeting,  the  city  of  his  birth.    This  house,  indeed,  is 
barren  of  association  with  the  reform  movements  to 
which  his  life  was  devoted,  if  we  except  the  fact  that 
here  in  1829  Garrison  made  his  first  important  anti- 
slavery  address.    Here,  to  paraphrase  his  own  words, 
he  seized  the  trump  and  blew  the  first  of  those  jarring 
blasts  by  which  the  land  was  shaken  as  a  leaf  is  shaken 
by  the  wind.    Its  doors  were  closed  to  anti-slavery 
meetings  from  that  hour.    Yet  here  we  do  stand  at 
the  center  of  the  scene  where  Wendell  Phillips's  life 
of  conflict  and  peril  was  passed.    Yonder  on  Beacon 
Street  he  was  born.    Down  there  on  Common  Street 
he  died.    Over  there  in  Essex  Street  he  lived  for  forty 
years.    In  the  burial  ground  beside  us  his  body  lay 
interred  for  two  years  before  its  removal  to  the  green 

5 


6  c:  V      .  V  {  HfaSNDELL  PHILLIPS 

C.::./j?::-:-f/:^    I*") 

r  sliaclefc  of  "Milton,    f'aneuil  Hall,  the  scene  of  his  first 

triumph  and  of  many  later  ones,  is  near  at  hand,  and 
only  across  the  street  are  Tremont  Temple  and  Music 
Hall,  where,  just  before  and  during  the  war, his  great 
est  speeches  were  delivered,  and  whence  the  ever  at 
tentive  mobs  escorted  him  to  his  door  and  received 
his  stately,  "Good  night,  gentlemen."   Yes,  these  are 
the  very  streets  he  loved  inexpressibly,  over  which  his 
mother  held  up  tenderly  his  baby  feet,  and  which 
he  swore,  if  God  granted  him  time  enough,  he  would 
make  too  pure  to  bear  the  footsteps  of  a  slave. 
/       Wendell  Phillips  was  a  born  reformer.  He  could 
I   never  have  been  satisfied  with  anything  short  of  per- 
\  fection.  He  contended  with  the  evils  of  his  time,  but 
I  if  he  were  living  in  our  day  he  would  be  at  war 
/  with  the  evils  that  surround  us  now ;  and  if  he  should 
return  to  earth  a  thousand  years  hence,  it  would  be 
the  same.   As  long  as  anything  better  remained  to 
be  achieved,  as  long  as  injustice  held  any  foothold 
on  the  globe,  he  would  still  be  crying  "forward,"  and 
^assailing  the  powers  of  darkness  with  all  his  old-time 
Woquence  and  zeal. 

Added  to  that,  he  was,  from  deliberate  and  pro 
found  conviction,  an  agitator.  He  believed  that  in  a 
free  country  all  real  progress  must  be  brought  about 
by  agitation.  He  accepted  Sir  Robert  Peel's  defini 
tion  of  the  word,  "the  marshaling  of  the  conscience 
of  a  nation  to  mould  its  laws."  But  his  faith  in  the 
method  went  even  deeper  than  that.  Not  only  was  it 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS*''-  '  7 

•  •   '     **•«**.•••*••  •*• 
•  «••*•     •  •    ,«.**•••.• 

the  sole  means  by  which  reforms  could  fee  'carried 
through,  it  was  the  only  means  by  which  governments 
could  be  kept  free.  A  people  that  is  satisfied  with  the 
institutions  it  has  gained,  that  worships  the  past  and 
refuses  to  go  forward  to  larger  freedom,  has  already 
ceased  to  be  free.  In  his  own  eloquent  words,  "If  the 
Alps,  piled  in  cold  and  still  sublimity,  be  the  emblem 
of  despotism,  the  ever  restless  ocean  is  ours,  only  pure 
because  never  still." 

In  the  widest  sense  of  the  word  he  was  a  democrat. 
He  believed  in  the  people.  "The  people  mean  right," 
he  said,  "and  in  the  end  they  will  have  the  right." 
He  saw  that  it  is  never  for  the  interest  of  the  masses 
that  injustice  should  be  done.  Hence,  while  it  is  not 
safe  to  trust  any  class  by  itself,  it  is  safe  to  trust  the 
people.  Not  any  one  race,  not  either  sex,  but  all  races, 
both  sexes,  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  good  and 
bad,  learned  and  ignorant,  rich  and  poor.  He  would 
give  the  suffrage  to  all.  He  would  put  the  ballot  even 
in  the  hands  of  the  most  ignorant,  and  then  turn  to 
the  state  and  say:  "Here  is  one  of  your  rulers.  Now 
see  to  it  that  he  is  educated,  or  he  may  give  you 
trouble."  He  believed  in  universal  suffrage  because 
it  took  bonds  of  the  rich  and  powerful  to  do  their  dut 
by  the  weak  and  poor. 

Himself  an  aristocrat  by  birth  and  breeding,  he  be 
came  such  a  tribune  of  the  people  as  Rome  never  saw. 
If  you  look  only  at  the  surface  of  things,  his  career  is 
full  of  contradictions.  Here  was  a  man  of  purest 


8  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

Anglo-Saxon  lineage  spending  his  life  in  the  service 
of  the  dusky  sons  of  Africa;  and  not  only  that,  but 
claiming  for  the  African  race,  "by  virtue  of  its  cour 
age,  its  purpose,  and  its  endurance,  a  place  as  near  to 
the  Saxon  as  any  other  blood  in  history."  Here  was 
a  devout  Christian,  adhering  to  the  creed  of  his  fathers, 
yet  spurning  the  nominal  Christianity  of  his  day, 
coming  out  from  it  and  shaking  the  very  dust  of  its 
threshold  from  his  feet.  Here  was  a  man  dowered 
with  all  the  gifts  of  intellect,  all  the  graces  of  person 
and  of  speech,  "formed,"  as  Emerson  declared,  "for 
the  galleries  of  Europe,"  and  able,  if  he  would  only 
stretch  out  his  hand,  to  take  the  highest  prizes  of  pub 
lic  life,  refusing  every  bribe,  turning  his  back  on  all 
the  world  had  to  offer,  and  casting  in  his  lot  with  a 
handful  of  fanatics.  Trained  for  the  bar  and  pre 
eminently  fitted  for  success  in  the  forum,  he  left  the 
courthouse,  locked  his  office  door,  and  repudiated  his 
oath  to  support  the  Constitution.  Deeply  interested 
in  politics,  and  master,  as  few  men  were,  of  political 
questions,  he  never  held  an  office,  he  never  threw  a 
ballot,  he  refused  to  swear  allegiance  to  a  govern 
ment  that  required  him  to  lend  his  hand  to  the  main 
tenance  of  human  bondage.  Devoting  himself  for 
thirty  years  to  the  overthrow  of  slavery,  and  living 
to  see  his  object  accomplished  in  the  midst  of  a  con 
vulsion  that  left  the  anti-slavery  sentiment  dominant 
in  the  land  and  made  the  once-despised  name  of  Abo 
litionist  a  passport  to  public  favor,  he  refused  to  ride 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  9 

into  political  office  on  the  crest  of  the  victorious  wave 
— left  others  to  celebrate  the  victory,  while  he  pushed 
on,  unhesitating  and  almost  alone,  to  new  battlefields 
for  suffering  humanity.  It  is  plain  we  must  go  be 
neath  the  surface  if  we  would  understand  a  man  like 
this. 

Reformer,  agitator,  democrat,  tribune  of  the  peo 
ple,  he  was  something  more:  he  was  a  prophet.    He 
saw  with  open  eye  the  secret  of  the  world.    He  saw! 
under  every  disguise  and  through  all  confusion,  the\ 
clear  working  of  the  eternal  will.    God  reigns.    False-  \ 
hood  and  wrong  are  only  for  a  day — justice  is  for  / 
the  ages.    In  the  serene  confidence  of  that  vision  he/ 
rebuked  the  mighty  oppressors  of  his  time  and  cheered! 
the  hearts  of  the  downtrodden  and  the  weak.    "The\ 
spirit  of  the  Lord  was  upon  him,  because  he  had 
anointed  him  to  preach  good  tidings  to  the  poor.    He 
had  sent  him  to  proclaim  liberty  to  the  captive  and 
the  opening  of  the  prison  to  them  that  were  bound." 
We  shall  try  in  vain  to  understand  the  Abolition 
movement  unless  we  recognize  from  the  beginning 
that  it  was  a  religious  movement.    It  was  a  revival  of 
original,  primitive  Christianity,  and  the  application 
of  those  principles  to  the  United  States  of  America 
in  the  second  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century.    These 
men  actually  believed  in  the  fatherhood  of  God  and 
the  brotherhood  of  man.    They  really  remembered 
those  that  were  in  bonds  as  bound  with  them.    They 
took  Christ's  word  for  it  that  what  they  did  unto 


10  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

these,  the  very  least  of  His  brethren,  they  were  doing 
unto  Him.  It  was  very  simple.  How  should  we  like 
to  be  slaves?  How  should  we  like  to  have  our  chil 
dren  sold  and  torn  from  our  arms?  How  should  we 
like  to  see  our  daughters  ravished,  our  fathers  and 
mothers  beaten  till  they  could  not  feel?  How  should 
we  like  to  be  goods  and  chattels,  with  no  rights  our 
masters  were  bound  to  respect?  Well,  that  was  the 
system  of  human  slavery  that  did  exist  in  the  United 
States.  The  Abolitionists  were  never  too  hard  upon 
that  system;  they  never  gave  it  any  harsher  name 
than  it  deserved;  and  for  the  very  simple  reason  that 
it  would  have  been  impossible.  They  used  all  the 
words  within  their  reach,  but  the  English  language 
had  no  words  black  enough  to  paint  it  or  hot  enough 
to  damn  it.  Unless  words  had  been  scorpions  and 
sentences  had  been  thunderbolts,  it  would  have  been 
impossible  for  human  speech  to  denounce  it  as  it 
deserved. 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States!  We  speak 
the  words  today  with  affection  and  with  awe,  and  well 
we  may,  for  it  gathers  up  and  bears  in  its  majestic 
bosom  the  liberties  of  all ;  and  wherever  today,  under 
the  Stars  and  Stripes,  the  meanest  child  of  man  is 
denied  the  equal  protection  of  the  law,  there  is  an  in 
famous  and  treasonous  violation  of  the  Constitution. 
But  I  am  speaking  for  the  moment  of  1835.  I  am 
taking  you  back  to  a  time  when  obedience  to  the 
Golden  Rule  was  treason,  when  the  Constitution  was 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  11 

not  the  surety  of  freedom  but  the  guaranty  of  bond 
age,  when  the  snake  slavery  had  its  loathsome,  slimy 
nest  in  the  very  hollow  of  its  shield.  I  speak  of  a  time 
when  if  you  swore  to  support  the  Constitution  you 
swore  that  you  would  help  strike  down  every  black 
man  who  had  the  courage  to  fight  for  a  liberty  that 
belonged  to  him  as  much  as  yours  belonged  to  you — 
when,  if  you  swore  to  it,  you  promised  to  turn  the 
trembling,  starving  fugitive  from  your  door,  or  bind 
him  and  send  him  back  to  unpaid  labor,  to  torture,  or 
to  death.  That  was  the  Constitution  the  Abolition 
ists  refused  to  lend  their  hands  to.  Tested  by  the 
teachings  of  Jesus  Christ,  were  they  wrong  or  were 
they  right  when  they  refused?  Did  they  go  too  far 
when  they  adopted  the  words  of  the  Hebrew  prophet 
and  said,  it  is  "a  covenant  with  death  and  an  agree 
ment  with^hell"?  Take  the  case  of&eorgeJLatuner. 
He  was  seized  in  Boston  as  a  slave.  He  had  escaped 
from  Norfolk,  Virginia,  with  his  wife  and  children 
and  was  living  here.  They  took  him  on  a  false  charge 
of  theft.  He  was  brought  before  Chief  Justice  Shaw, 
in  the  state  court,  was  denied  a  jury  trial,  and  sent 
back  to  Judge  Story's  court,  the  United  States 
Court,  where  he  lay  under  the  beak  and  talons  of  the 
American  eagle ;  from  that  court  he  was  sent  back  to 
slavery.  At  the  bidding  of  the  Constitution,  lawyer, 
trader,  and  priest  had  joined  hands  to  sacrifice  the 
victim.  There  was  a  vast  meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall 
on  the  Sunday  night  before  he  was  condemned.  Stand- 


12  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

ing  before  the  furious  mob  that  had  just  howled  down 
one  speaker,  Wendell  Phillips  said:  "We  presume  to 
believe  the  Bible  outweighs  the  Statute  Book.  When 
I  look  upon  these  crowded  thousands,  and  see  them 
trample  on  their  consciences  and  the  rights  of  their 
fellowmen  at  the  bidding  of  a  piece  of  parchment,  I 
say  my  curse  be  on  the  Constitution  of  these  United 
States!" 

The  Abolitionists  had  not  come  to  that  extreme 
position  willingly  or  in  a  moment.  They  were  driven 
to  it  by  the  inexorable  logic  of  events.  Garrison  be 
gan  his  crusade  by  endeavoring  to  enlist  the  Church. 
He  was  nothing  but  a  boy,  without  friends,  without 
money,  without  prestige,  without  even  a  press  to  print 
his  paper  on.  He  turned  to  one  after  another  of  the 
natural  leaders  of  the  time,  and  besought  them  to 
champion  the  cause.  One  after  another  they  all  re 
fused.  Left  alone,  he  said,  "If  no  one  else  will  assail 
this  gigantic  system  of  crime,  I  must  do  it!"  And 
he  did.  He  was  thrown  into  jail;  assassins  lay  in 
wait  for  his  life ;  sovereign  states  set  a  price  upon  his 
head;  but  he  kept  on,  making  his  appeal  to  the  con 
science  of  the  American  people  to  wash  their  hands 
of  the  sin.  Then  he  found  he  had  aroused  the  hostil 
ity  of  the  very  forces  he  had  looked  to  for  support. 
Not  only  would  they  not  lead  themselves,  they  would 
not  suffer  another  to  go  forward.  They  turned  upon 
him.  Pulpit  and  press,  traders  and  statesmen,  col 
lege  presidents — all  the  recognized  leadership  of  the 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  18 

time  cast  him  out  and  strove  to  put  him  to  silence. 
Not  content  with  this,  they  went  on  to  defend  the 
institution  itself.  The  Church  apologized  for  it ;  wel 
comed  slaveholders  to  its  communion  table;  opened 
its  pulpit  to  men-stealers.  Merchants  said,  "You 
must  not  attack  slavery,  it  will  ruin  trade!"  Poli 
ticians  said,  "If  you  breathe  a  word  about  it,  you  will 
break  up  the  Union."  The  press  said,  "Men  who 
talk  like  that  ought  to  be  mobbed."  The  pulpit  mur 
mured  "Amen,"  and  confirmed  its  pious  approval 
with  a  text.  Bishops  wrote  books  to  prove  that  God 
had  always  intended  the  black  race  to  be  slaves ;  and 
many  thought  it  doubtful  whether  they  had  any  souls 
at  all. 

For  half  a  century  the  South  had  been  in  the 
saddle.  It  had  furnished  the  political  leaders  of  the 
nation.  The  North,  meanwhile,  had  turned  to  the 
making  of  money  and  the  development  of  the  land. 
All  the  North  asked  was  to  be  let  alone,  that  it 
might  continue  to  pile  up  its  dollars.  What  should 
the  Abolitionists  have  done?  If  they  sat  down  under 
the  threats  of  the  slave  power,  the  liberty  to  speak 
and  print  was  lost.  It  was  not  now  a  question  whether 
the  slaves  of  the  South  should  be  set  free — it  was 
whether  the  free  men  of  the  North  should  be  made 
slaves.  Should  they  file  their  tongues  to  silence  upon 
the  gravest  moral  question  of  the  age  at  the  bidding 
of  false  priests,  hucksters,  and  demagogues?  Thank 
God,  they  said,  No !  We  owe  it  to  them  that  we  have 


14  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

free  speech  today.  Even  Channing  acknowledged 
this.  They  looked  about  them  and  took  their  bear 
ings.  Their  fathers  had  formed  this  Union  and  bound 
it  to  slavery.  Should  they  submit  to  it  as  a  necessary 
evil  in  the  hope  that  some  day  the  Constitution  might 
be  amended  and  slavery  removed?  They  were  con 
fronted  by  the  fact  that  slavery  was  on  the  increase 
— that  the  South  was  determined  to  make  it  perpet 
ual,  that  the  North  submitted,  and  that  the  powers 
dominant  in  Church  and  State  forbade  even  a  peace 
able  discussion  of  the  question.  They  made  up  their 
minds  that  somebody  must  move.  They  saw  that  re 
sponsibility  for  the  Union,  and  consequently  for  slav 
ery,  rested  on  each  and  every  one.  They  refused  to 
carry  that  responsibility  any  longer.  They  "came 
out."  They  appealed  to  all  men  to  come  out  with 
them,  to  form  a  new  Union  of  free  states,  parting 
peaceably  from  the  states  that  were  determined  to  re 
main  slave.  Their  course  was  radical.  Yes,  it  was 
an  appeal  to  the  ancient,  sacred  right  of  revolution. 
But  mark  this — the  changes  required  were  changes 
that  could  be  brought  about  only  by  revolution.  The 
South  refusing  to  abolish  slavery,  it  was  impossible 
for  the  North  to  do  so  by  amending  the  Constitution. 
When  the  change  finally  came,  it  came  by  way  of 
revolution.  Not,  indeed,  the  peaceable  revolution  the 
Abolitionists  proposed,  but  the  awful  revolution  of 
war.  The  bloody  sequel  showed  that  they  were  right. 
They  approached  the  question  like  statesmen.  They 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  15 

handled  it  with  plain,  unanswerable  logic.  They  were  \ 
the  only  party  at  the  North  that  did  meet  the  ques-  \ 
tion  squarely.  At  the  South  there  was  another  party 
that  met  it  with  equal  boldness  and  directness,  assert 
ing  that  slavery  was  right — the  party  of  secession. 
They  were  the  only  consistent  parties  in  the  country. 
There  never  was  any  real  union  between  the  slave 
states  and  the  free.  The  only  approach  to  it  was 
when  the  North  was  utterly  subservient  to  the  South, 
that  is,  when  the  so-called  free  states  were  really  slave 
states  like  the  rest.  Long  before  Seward  had  coined 
his  famous  phrase,  "the  irrepressible  conflict,"  long 
before  Lincoln  had  declared  that  "a  house  divided 
against  itself  cannot  stand,"  yes,  a  quarter  of  a  cen 
tury  before  either  of  those  utterances,  the  same  truth 
had  fallen  upon  deaf  ears  from  the  lips  of  Garrison 
and  his  fellows.  If  to  discern  the  true  nature  of  the 
problem  and  foresee  in  a  large  way  the  solution  that 
must  be  found,  while  choosing  the  only  means  that 
can  secure  the  object — if  this  is  to  be  a  statesman, 
then  the  right  of  the  Abolitionist  to  that  title  is  be 
yond  doubt  or  cavil.  With  unquestioning  faith  in  the 
justice  of  his  cause,  with  unclouded  sight  of  the  truth 
of  his  position,  he  took  the  country  up  by  its  four 
corners  and  shook  it  with  a  tempest  of  moral  power. 
Mobs  were  the  proof  of  his  evangel.  The  land  was 
stagnant  with  apathy,  and  where  the  wind  and  light 
ning  of  the  word  came  there  was  tumult  and  disturb 
ance.  Mobs  were  bad  enough,  but  they  were  a  thou- 


16  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

sand  times  better  than  the  sluggish  calm  that  pre 
ceded  them,  the  languor  and  torpor  of  spiritual  death. 
If  we  deny  the  name  of  statesman  to  the  Abolition 
ist,  to  whom  of  his  time  should  we  grant  it?  Should 
it  be  to  the  smooth  compromisers,  like  Clay,  who 
spread  the  thin  batter  of  mutual  concession  over  the 
rumbling  volcano  of  irreconcilable  forces?  Should  it 
be  to  those  valorous  Northerners  who  warned  the 
South  that  the  annexation  of  Texas  would  be  the  dis 
solution  of  the  Union,  and  then,  when  Texas  was 
annexed,  ate  their  own  words  and  made  haste  to  take 
the  hero  of  that  infernal  war  for  their  Chief  Magis 
trate?  Should  it  be  to  a  man  like  Webster,  so  far\ 
behind  his  age  or  so  deaf  to  the  voices  of  humanity  * 
that  he  actually  thought  the  consciences  of  men  could 
be  stifled,  and  that  this  mighty  movement,  which 
he  sneeringly  nicknamed  "the  rub-a-dub  agitation," 
could  be  put  down?  Should  it  be  to  leaders  like 
Birney,  and  Gerrit  Smith  for  a  season,  who  tried  to 
make  themselves  believe  that  the  Constitution  was  an 
anti-slavery  document?  Should  it  be  to  the  men  who 
formed  the  Republican  party  with  the  avowed  pur 
pose  of  stopping  the  extension  of  slavery,  of  abolish 
ing  it  where  the  national  government  had  the  power, 
and  of  putting  it,  as  Lincoln  said,  "where  the  public 
mind  might  rest  in  the  belief  that  it  was  in  the  course 
of  ultimate  extinction,"  and  yet,  when  secession  was 
upon  them,  went  down  on  their  knees,  in  Congress, 
and  offered  to  adopt  a  Constitutional  amendment 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  17 

making  it  impossible  ever  to  get  rid  of  slavery? 
Should  it  be  to  the  men  in  office  in  the  days  of  the 
great  rebellion,  who  finally  adopted  emancipation  at 
the  point  of  the  bayonet,  as  the  last  and  only  means 
of  saving  the  Union,  by  bringing  to  their  side  the 
sympathy  of  the  civilized  world  and  the  tardy  succor 
of  an  outraged  and  alienated  God?  Or  should  it  not 
rather  be  accorded  to  the  men  who  saw  and  declared 
in  1835  what,  thirty  years  later,  all  men  were  obliged 
to  see?  They  did  not  need  the  Dred  Scott  decision  to 
show  them  the  plan  and  purpose  of  the  slave  power. 
They  understood  it  from  the  first. 

I  have  no  quarrel  with  you  if  you  only  mean  to 
make  excuses  for  the  millions  who  never  answered 
to  their  call,  who  could  never  rise  to  the  height  on 
which  they  stood.  The  saving  remnant  is  always,  in 
all  ages,  only  a  remnant — "a  few  leaves  upon  the 
topmost  bough."  But  when  you  deny  them  the  claim 
to  statesmanship — when  you  imply  that  the  measures 
they  proposed  were  impracticable  and  vain — I  ask 
you  to  point  to  the  popular  statesman  of  their  time 
who  proposed  anything  that  had  a  feather's  weight 
against  the  mighty  tempest  that  swept  all  selfish 
calculations  to  the  Gehenna  of  civil  war.  What  did 
the  Abolitionists  propose?  They  demanded  emanci 
pation — immediate  and  unconditional.  You  came  to 
it  at  last,  not  willingly,  not  through  conversion,  but 
when  God  had  driven  you  to  it  with  the  lash  of  re 
bellion  and  defeat.  It  was  only  the  old  excuse — Let 


18  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

us  do  evil  that  good  may  come.  Men  could  not  trust 
God  to  make  the  right  successful.  They  must  go  into 
partnership  with  the  devil  to  do  the  Lord's  work. 
The  Abolitionists,  whose  faith  in  God  has  never  been 
surpassed,  who  believed  in  doing  right  and  leaving  it 
to  Him  who  made  it  right  to  see  that  justice  was 
expedient — they  were  the  infidels  and  heretics  of  the 
time.  "If  I  die  before  emancipation,"  said  Phillips, 
"write  this  for  my  epitaph,  'Here  lies  Wendell  Phil 
lips,  infidel  to  a  church  that  defended  human  slavery 

—traitor  to  a  government  that  was  only  an  organized 

>nspiracy  against  the  rights  of  men/  ' 
The  movement  begun  by  Garrison  had  proceeded 
for  seven  years  before  his  most  powerful  assistant 
came  to  his  side.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  imme 
diate  occasion  of  his  coming,  he  owed  his  anti-slavery 
birth,  as  he  always  declared,  to  Garrison.  "For  my 
self,"  said  he,  "no  words  can  adequately  tell  the  meas 
ureless  debt  I  owe  him — the  intellectual  and  moral 
life  he  opened  to  me."  In  the  principles  of  the  two 
men  touching  their  life  work  there  was  never  any,  the 
slightest,  antagonism  or  division.  Phillips,  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end,  was  a  Garrisonian  Abolitionist. 
To  the  service  of  the  cause  he  brought  his  own  rich 
and  peculiar  gifts.  First  of  all,  his  character,  his 
personality.  Puritan  of  the  Puritans ;  son  of  the  best 
blood  of  Boston;  trained  by  Latin  School,  Harvard 
College,  and  the  law  teachers  of  Cambridge;  hand 
some,  athletic,  accomplished;  possessed  of  a  singular 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  19 

personal  charm,  the  talismanic  gift  that  moved  Emer 
son  to  say,  "I  would  give  a  thousand  shekels  for  that 
man's  secret";  endowed  with  such  eloquence  a  Greek 
would  have  said  that  on  his  lips  the  Attic  bees  had 
swarmed  and  left  their  sweetness;  yet  with  a  rapier- 
like  thrust,  skillful  to  disarm  his  antagonist  or  pierce 
the  thickest  armor,  so  that  Mrs.  Stowe  said  truly, 
"In  invective  no  American  or  English  orator  has  ever 
surpassed  him";  an  easy  mastery  over  every  sort  of 
audience ;  breadth  of  view  and  statesmanlike  compre 
hension  of  the  issue ;  unflinching  courage,  undrooping 
hope,  unfaltering  confidence  in  the  triumph  of  the 
truth  and  the  mighty  power  of  God.  Such  was  the 
man  who  closed  his  office  door,  recanted  his  oath  of 
allegiance,  and  made  himself  an  alien  in  the  city  of 
his  fathers,  to  join  the  Abolitionists.  It  was  the  only 
step  he  could  have  taken  and  remained  true  to  his 
blood,  his  traditions,  and  the  voice  of  conscience  that 
had  led  him  from  the  cradle.  It  was  a  happy  choice. 
It  gave  him  the  fellowship  of  the  noblest  spirits  of  his 
time.  Do  you  think  he  ever  missed  the  attentions  of 
the  class  he  went  out  from?  If  you  imagine  that  he 
cast  one  wistful  look  behind  him,  you  have  yet  to  gain 
your  first  glimpse  into  the  character  of  Wendell  Phil 
lips.  What  he  said  of  Garrison  may  be  said  of  him, 
"There  were  not  arrows  enough  in  the  whole  quiver 
of  the  Church  and  State  to  wound  him."  Think  what 
it  must  have  meant  to  the  little  band  of  reformers 
arrayed  against  a  hostile  nation,  whom  even  John 


20  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

Quincy  Adams  could  describe  as  "a  small,  shallow, 
enthusiastic  party,"  to  find  in  their  midst  the  most 
eloquent  man  who  spoke  the  English  language,  whom 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  pronounced  "the  most  admi 
rable  orator  in  the  world."  Said  Emerson,  "  Strange 
as  it  may  seem,  it  is  true,  the  world  owes  the  finest 
orator  of  the  age  to  the  movement  that  enlisted 
Wendell  Phillips  in  the  service  of  the  poor,  despised 
slave";  and  in  his  journal  he  added,  "Everett  and 
Webster  ought  to  go  to  school  to  him."  Now  let 
the  South  bring  on  her  Randolphs,  her  Haynes,  her 
Breckenridges !  They  shall  meet  a  power  of  speech 
as  much  more  withering  than  theirs  as  the  fire  of  the 
prophets  is  fiercer  than  the  temper  of  the  mob.  There 
was  need  of  such  a  voice.  "Webster,"  said  Phillips, 
"had  taught  the  North  the  'bated  breath  and  crouch 
ing  of  a  slave.  It  needed  that  we  should  exhaust 
even  the  Saxon  vocabulary  of  scorn,  to  fitly  utter  the 
haughty  and  righteous  contempt  that  honest  men  had 
for  men-stealers.  Only  in  that  way  could  we  wake 
the  North  to  self-respect,  or  teach  the  South  that  at 
length  she  had  met  her  equal,  if  not  her  master." 

While  John  Brown  was  on  trial,  Phillips  spoke  at 
Plymouth  Church,  from  Beecher's  pulpit,  on  "The 
Lesson  of  the  Hour."  "Virginia,"  said  he,  "is  a 
pirate  ship,  and  John  Brown  sails  the  seas  the  Lord 
High  Admiral  of  the  Almighty,  with  his  commission 
to  sink  every  pirate  he  meets  on  God's  ocean  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  I  mean  literally  and  exactly  what 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  21 

I  say.  One  on  God's  side  is  a  majority.  Virginia  is 
only  another  Algiers.  The  barbarous  horde  who  gag 
each  other,  imprison  women  for  teaching  children  to 
read,  prohibit  the  Bible,  sell  men  on  the  auction  block, 
abolish  marriage,  condemn  one-half  their  women  to 
prostitution,  and  devote  themselves  to  the  breeding 
of  human  beings  for  sale,  is  only  a  larger  and  a  blacker 
Algiers.  John  Brown  has  twice  as  much  right  to  hang 
Governor  Wise  as  Governor  Wise  has  to  hang  him." 
Here  burst  on  the  speaker  a  tempest  of  cheers  and 
hisses.  The  silver  voice  went  on,  "You  see  I  am  talk 
ing  of  that  absolute  essence  of  things  which  lives  in 
the  sight  of  the  Eternal  and  the  Infinite,  not  as  men 
judge  it  in  the  rotten  morals  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  among  a  herd  of  states  that  calls  itself  an  empire 
because  it  raises  cotton  and  sells  slaves!" 

The  Abolitionists  were  right  in  charging  the  re 
sponsibility  for  slavery  upon  the  North.  "Northern  )  J"  \& 
opinion,"  said  Phillips,  "the  weight  of  Northern  "f  |\ 
power,  is  the  real  slaveholder  of  America."  Edward 
Everett,  on  the  floor  of  Congress,  declared  himself 
ready  to  ^hc^ilder  hjsjoausket  to  put  down  the  first 
slave-rising.  Do  you  wonder  that  Randolph  of  Roa- 
noke  boasted,  "We  do  not  rule  the  North  by  our 
Southern  black  slaves  but  by  your  Northern  white 
ones  "  ?  The  task  before  the  Abolitionists  was  to  wake 
the  North  to  its  duty,  to  give  it  no  rest  or  peace  until 
it  should  withdraw  the  only  power  that  made  slavery 
possible  upon  this  continent.  By  1860  the  North 


22  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

had  been  roused,  and  was  beginning  to  withdraw  its 
power.  The  South  saw  the  handwriting  on  the  wall. 
"For  the  first  time  in  our  history,"  said  Phillips, 
"the  slave  has  elected  a  President  of  the  United 
States."  It  was  exactly  so.  The  slave  question,  like 
Aaron's  rod,  had  devoured  all  other  political  issues 
and  held  the  stage  alone.  True  to  his  teachings  of 
twenty  years,  Phillips  urged  the  acknowledgment  of 
secession  and  the  peaceable  separation  of  the  states. 
But  neither  to  Phillips  nor  to  any  other  prophet  had 
it  been  given  to  divine  the  depth  and  intensity  of 
Northern  sentiment  that  clung  around  the  flag.  When 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  fell  from  Sumter  and  the  mul 
titudinous  North  leaped  as  one  man  to  avenge  it,  the 
Abolitionists  saw  that  there  would  be  no  disunion, 
that  the  old  Union  had  been  swept  away  forever, 
and  that  the  new  Union  would  be  free.  Only  the 
winter  before,  Phillips  had  spoken  in  Music  Hall  at 
the  peril  of  his  life,  facing  many  a  murderous  pistol 
in  his  Sunday  congregation,  and  had  gone  down  to 
his  house  in  Essex  Street  followed  by  thousands  of 
angry  men.  Now  he  spoke  from  the  same  platform, 
but,  "for  the  first  time  in  his  anti-slavery  life,  he  spoke 
under  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  and  welcomed  the  tread 
of  Massachusetts  men  marshaled  for  war."  He  hailed 
that  sublime  rally  of  a  great  people  to  the  defence  of 
the  national  honor,  "a  noble  and  puissant  nation  rous 
ing  herself  like  a  strong  man  from  sleep  and  shaking 
her  invincible  locks."  There  had  been  nothing  to 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  23 

match  it  since  that  night  when  the  beacons  blazed 
from  Dover  to  Carlisle  and,  between  sunset  and  sun 
rise,  all  England  rose  to  hurl  back  the  Armada. 
"Today,"  said  he,  "the  slave  thanks  God  for  a  sighl 
of  this  banner  and  counts  it  the  pledge  of  his  redemp-^ 
tion.  Hitherto  it  may  have  meant  what  you  thought 
or  what  I  did;  today  it  means  sovereignty  and  jus 
tice."  Then  his  lips  were  touched  by  a  live  coal  from 
the  altar,  and  he  burst  into  prophecy:  "Years  hence, 
when  the  smoke  of  the  conflict  has  cleared  away,  the 
world  will  see  under  our  banner  all  tongues,  all  creeds, 
all  races  one  brotherhood,  and  on  the  banks  of  the! 
Potomac  the  genius  of  Liberty  robed  in  light,  four 
and  thirty  stars  for  her  diadem,  broken  chains  under 
her  feet,  and  an  olive  branch  in  her  right  hand." 

It  was  one  of  the  happiest  coincidences  in  history 
that  the  anti-slavery  cause  should  have  culminated 
during  the  very  years  that  saw  Wendell  Phillips  in 
the  full  maturity  of  his  splendid  powers.  When  the 
rebellion  began,  he  was  fifty  years  of  age.  For  more 
than  twenty  years  he  had  been  discussing  the  slave 
question  in  all  its  bearings.  He  had  studied  and  pon 
dered  it  in  all  its  phases.  Every  weapon  in  his  arsenal 
was  bright  with  service  and  ready  for  instant  use. 
His  armor  had  been  hardened  by  blows.  His  speech 
had  acquired  its  perfection  of  form  and  was  now  to 
be  charged  with  unexampled  force.  In  1861,  as  Mon- 
cure  Conway  has  justly  recorded,  he  delivered  the 
greatest  speeches  that  ever  have  been  heard  in  Amer- 


24  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

ica.  No  man  saw  more  clearly  that  the  war  could 
never  be  won  and  the  Union  established  except  on 
the  basis  of  freedom.  The  North  might  indeed  over 
power  her  adversary,  but  she  could  never  make  a 
Union  between  freedom  and  slavery.  This  was  the 
burden  of  the  prophet  during  those  four  long  years, 
years  of  the  warrior,  filled  with  "confused  noise 
and  garments  rolled  in  blood,"  "with  dreadful  faces 
thronged  and  fiery  arms."  It  was  his  mission  to  rouse 
the  powerful  and  populous  North  till  it  cried  as  with 
a  single  voice,  "Proclaim  liberty  throughout  the  land, 
unto  all  the  inhabitants  thereof."  In  the  nature  of 
things  it  is  impossible  to  separate  and  weigh  the  in- 
luence  of  any  one  man  in  the  formation  of  public 
opinion,  that  subtle,  all-pervasive  force  which, 

"Like  the  air, 
Is  seldom  heard  but  when  it  speaks  in  thunder"; 

but  that  there  was  in  all  that  tremendous  period  no 
clearer  or  more  potent  voice,  the  Muse  of  History 
will  yet  affirm. 

When  slavery  had  been  abolished  he  was  too  deeply 
concerned  with  the  dangers  that  lay  ahead  to  join  in 
the  cheers  of  victory.  He  knew  that  the  old  hatred  of 
the  Negro  would  find  new  ways  to  work  against  him. 
He  would  not  halt  to  hang  up  wreaths  and  trophies 
or  to  build  monuments.  He  girded  up  his  loins  and 
pushed  on  to  fight  for  enfranchisement.  He  was  for 
taking  advantage  of  the  sentiment  for  freedom  and 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  25 

equality  while  it  lasted.  He  struck  while  the  iron  was 
hot.  He  worked  while  it  was  yet  day,  knowing  that 
the  night  was  coming  wherein  no  man  could  work. 
From  1865  to  1870,  the  most  alert  and  strenuous  years 
of  his  life,  he  toiled  night  and  day  for  the  principle 
that  was  finally  embodied  in  the  Fifteenth  Amend 
ment.  To  him  more  than  to  any  other  man,  perhaps 
more  than  to  all  other  men,  its  adoption  was  due.  He 
was  right.  The  night  has  succeeded  to  the  glorious 
day  that  gave  us  the  three  great  amendments,  worthy 
to  be  written  in  letters  of  gold  beside  the  Petition  of 
Right  and  Magna  Charta.  The  iron  that  was  heated 
seven  times  hot  in  the  furnace  of  battle  was  happily 
hammered,  before  it  was  too  late,  into  the  forms  that 
cannot  easily  be  changed.  But  the  glow  is  gone.  A 
new  generation  has  come  upon  the  scene.  Selfishness, 
prejudice,  the  old  spirit  of  caste,  are  doing  their  work; 
and  the  people  that  received  the  tables  of  stone,  from 
the  mount  that  burned  with  fire  and  shook  with  the 
thunders  of  Jehovah,  has  turned  to  the  worship  of  the 
golden  calf,  and  is  taking  its  pleasure  at  the  banquet. 
All  this  Phillips  foresaw  and  foretold.  Today  not  a 
state  of  the  old  Confederacy  records  the  Negro's  vote. 
The  Fifteenth  Amendment  is  sneered  at  by  millions 
at  the  North  as  the  greatest  blunder  of  the  age. 
Today  law  journals  publish  labored  articles  to  prove 
the  amendment  void.  And  yet  what  is  the  fifteenth 
amendment?  What  does  it  declare?  Merely  this, 
that  a  man's  right  to  vote  shall  not  depend  upon  his 


36  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

color  or  his  race.  The  South  is  as  free  as  ever  to  make 
the  right  depend  upon  any  reasonable  test  that  can  be 
applied  to  black  and  white  alike,  education,  property, 
what  she  will.  Why  need  she  resort  to  miserable 
subterfuges  to  let  in  her  poor,  ignorant,  and  vicious 
whites,  while  she  excludes  even  the  virtuous,  the 
learned,  and  prosperous  among  the  blacks?  Is  this 
the  courage,  is  this  the  sense  of  fairness,  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race? 

The  black  race,  in  less  than  fifty  years  of  freedom, 
has  justified  every  claim  of  the  Abolitionists.  It  has 
shown  itself  brave  in  battle,  faithful  in  peace,  eager 
to  learn,  capable  of  acquiring  and  controlling  wealth, 
and  able  to  produce  noble  and  far-sighted  leaders  of 
its  own  blood.  In  spite  of  race  prejudice  and  politi 
cal  betrayal,  it  has  got  its  feet  on  the  solid  ground 
of  material  well-being  and  is  reaching  out  its  hands 
with  slow,  patient,  but  irresistible  power  to  the  great 
prizes  of  the  world  of  effort  and  ideas.  Its  progress 
during  the  last  half-century  will  be  one  of  the  mar 
vels  of  history.  Every  man  who  loves  justice  or  hu 
manity  must  rejoice  at  such  a  sight.  We  who  have 
united  to  demand  of  the  American  people  the  rights 
guaranteed  by  the  Constitution  to  every  child  born 
under  the  flag,  and  who  are  resolved  never  to  rest 
until  those  rights  have  been  secured  in  fact  as  well  as 
in  name — we  have  reason  to  believe  that  the  master 
spirits  of  the  earlier  crusade  are  with  us  now.  As 
those  who  fought  by  Lake  Regillus,  in  the  old  days 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  27 

of  Rome,  saw  riding  on  their  right  the  Great  Twin 
Brethren  in  snow-white  coats  of  mail,  and  knew  that 

"The  gods  who  live  forever 

Were  on  Rome's  side  that  day," 

so  in  every  charge  we  make  against  the  forces  of 
oppression  we  have  a  right  to  feel  that  Garrison  and 
Phillips,  the  twin  warriors,  the  great  white  brothers, 
are  riding  at  our  side. 

The  anti-slavery  cause  was  only  one  branch  of 
a  movement  that  embraces  the  world  and  reaches 
through  all  time.  It  is  the  triumphant  progress  of 
democracy — the  movement  of  the  common  people 
to  take  possession  of  their  own.  Phillips  was  never 
narrow  enough  to  have  his  heart  bound  up  with  one 
race  only.  He  was  too  true  a  soldier  to  sit  down 
content  with  any  partial  triumph.  When  the  Anti- 
slavery  Society  disbanded  in  1870,  his  last  words  to 
his  companions  were:  "We  sheathe  no  sword.  We 
only  turn  our  front  upon  a  new  foe."  Looking  out 
over  Christendom  he  saw,  as  he  said,  "that  out  of 
some  three  hundred  or  four  hundred  millions,  at  least 
one  hundred  millions  never  had  enough  to  eat."  He 
saw  the  wealth  of  the  world  in  the  hands  of  compara 
tively  few,  and  he  saw  that  this  wealth  had  been  cre 
ated  not  by  the  few,  but  by  the  toil  of  the  many. 
With  brave,  unflinching  logic  he  announced  his  prin 
ciple,  "Labor,  the  creator  of  wealth,  is  entitled  to  all 
it  creates,"  and  avowed  himself  willing  to  follow  it  to 


28  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

its  ultimate  conclusion,  to  the  utter  abolition  of  the 
wage  system,  and  the  substitution,  for  cut-throat 
competition,  of  a  fair  and  just  cooperation.  He  had 
begun  his  study  of  the  labor  question  as  early  as  1861 
or  1862,  when  no  journal  except  the  anti-slavery 
papers  would  give  an  inch  of  space  to  its  discussion. 
But  in  1871  the  workingmen  of  Massachusetts  had 
formed  a  party  and  invited  him  to  be  their  candidate 
for  governor.  He  consented,  not  because  he  wished 
or  was  willing  to  be  elected,  if  that  had  been  possible, 
but  only  to  advance  the  agitation.  To  the  laboring 
men  he  gave  this  characteristic  advice:  "Write  on 
your  ballot  boxes,  'We  never  forget.  If  you  do  us 
a  wrong,  you  may  go  down  on  your  knees  and  say  I 
am  sorry  I  did  the  act,  and  it  may  avail  you  in  heaven, 
but  on  this  side  the  grave,  never!"  And  so  far  as 
workingmen  have  succeeded  in  their  political  aims,  it 
has  been  because  they  have  followed  that  advice. 

It  would  require  a  separate  address  to  recount 
his  services  to  other  causes.  The  wrongs  of  Ireland 
claimed  his  voice;  the  wrongs  of  the  Indian,  the 
Chinaman,  the  Jew.  He  spoke  for  the  temperance 
movement,  woman  suffrage,  prison  reform,  the  aboli 
tion  of  the  gallows.  He  taught  race  prejudice  its 
most  wholesome  lesson  in  his  lecture  on  the  great 
San  Domingo  black,  "the  soldier,  the  statesman,  the 
martyr,"  Toussaint  L'Ouverture;  he  gave  religious 
bigotry  its  most  stinging  rebuke  in  his  Daniel  O'Con- 
nell;  he  brought  religion  itself  to  its  most  vital  test 


/ 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  29 

/In  Christianity  a  Battle,  Not  a  Dream;  and  in  1881, 
/    in  the  most  finished  effort  of  his  life,  his  great  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  address  at  Harvard,  he  arraigned  the 
V  timid  scholarship  of  his  time  for  having  been  a  clog 
)on  the  wheels  of  reform,  and  turned  respectability 
pale  by  showing  it  that  the  Nihilists  were  only  the 
Washingtons  and  Warrens,  the  Patrick  Henrys  and 
Sam  Adamses  of  Russia.    In  the  last  fifteen  years  of 
his  life  he  fulfilled  more  perfectly  than  any  other 
American  his  own  definition  of  the  agitator.    "The 
\agitator,"  said  he,  "must  stand  outside  of  organiza- 
T^jons,  with  no  bread  to  earn,  no  candidate  to  elect, 
no  party  to  save,  no  object  but  the  truth — to  tear  a 
question  open  and  riddle  it  with  light." 

If  he  were  living  today  how  he  would  rejoice  over   \ 
those  six  stars  in  the  suffrage  banner — six  states  that 
have  risen  above  the  bigotry  of  sex.    How  he  would 
be  fighting  for  the  initiative  and  referendum  and 
overthrowing  every   argument  against   them,  argu 
ments  that  have  no  foundation  save  in  the  old  Tory 
distrust  of  the  people.    We  have  not  begun  to  come 
up  with  Wendell  Phillips,  but  such  achievements  are    , 
signs  that  we  are  on  his  trail.    He  was  a  prophet  even 
in  the  matter  of  mechanics.    Addressing  the  school 
children  of  Boston  in  1865,  he  said:  "We  have  in 
vented  the  telegraph.    But  what  of  that?    If  I  live 
forty  years  I  expect  to  see  a  telegraph  that  will  send 
messages  without  wires  and  both  ways  at  the  same     / 
time."    It  gives  one  a  weird  feeling  to  remember  that 


30  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

it  was  almost  exactly  forty  years  from  that  date 
that  Marconi's  wonderful  invention  was  given  to  the 
world.  Radical,  progressive,  as  he  was,  never  satis 
fied  with  what  had  been  attained,  he  had  yet  the 
poet's  reverence  for  the  past.  How  fond  he  was  of 

quoting  those  words : 

"The  great  of  old, 

The  dead  but  sceptered  sovereigns  who  still  rule 
Our  spirits  from  their  urns." 

His  lecture  on  Lost  Arts,  prepared  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment,  but  repeated  over  two  thousand  times, 
is  as  fine  a  tribute  as  was  ever  paid  to  the  forgotten 
genius  of  antiquity.  He  sympathized  with  every 
attempt  to  save  for  future  ages  "the  places  where 
bold  men  spoke  or  brave  men  died."  He  plead  in 
vain  for  the  preservation  of  the  Hancock  House. 
He  plead,  not  in  vain,  for  the  preservation  of  the 
Old  South.  Its  dark  walls  stand  today  a  proof  and 
trophy  of  his  eloquence. 

To  read  his  speeches  you  would  say  they  must  have 
come  flaming  from  the  furnace.  You  seem  to  hear 
the  lion  roar  of  Mirabeau  and  picture  to  yourself  the 
stormy  action  of  Demosthenes.  Yet  his  voice  at  its 
loudest  was  like  a  silver  clarion,  and  oftener  would 
remind  you  of  a  flute,  while  his  action  was  at  all  times 
the  grace  of  a  Greek  god.  Higginson  said:  "No 
matter  how  humble  the  client  he  represented,  he  al- 
rays  had  the  air  of  the  grand  seigneur."  He  really 
introduced  a  new  style  in  oratory.  He  made  the  old 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  31 

bombast  ridiculous.    Such  rantings  put  you  in  mind, 
of  savages  who  beat  tom-toms  and  yell  and  screec 
to  appall  their  enemies ;  but  Phillips  reminded  you  of 
the  Spartan  heroes,  who  marched,  as  Milton  said, 

"to  the  Dorian  strain 
Of  flutes  and  soft  recorders," 

going  forth  smiling  and  crowned  with  roses  to  those 
deadly  combats  from  which  it  was  their  point  of  honor 
never  to  retreat.  A  Southerner  who  listened  to  him 
in  the  old  days,  expecting  to  hear  a  noisy  demagogue, 
could  only  describe  him  as  "an  infernal  machine  set 
to  music." 

Severest  of  all  the  public  speakers  of  his  time,  he 
carried  in  his  bosom  the  tenderest  of  hearts. 

"For  all  the  lost  and  desolate 

Woman  and  man  revile, 
Saint  Francis  at  the  cloister  gate 
Had  not  so  sweet  a  smile." 

How  close  he  kept  to  the  people !  Lived  for  forty 
years  down  there  on  Essex  Street,  and  when  the  city 
tore  down  his  house  and  ran  the  pavement  over  its 
ruins,  moved  over  to  Common  Street,  to  a  house 
as  near  like  the  old  one  as  he  could  find.  Born  on 
Beacon  Hill,  died  in  Common  Street — that  seems 
to  tell  the  story  of  the  man.  In  the  morning,  when 
it  was  possible,  he  would  go  to  the  Criminal  Courts 
to  lend  his  hand  to  some  poor  outcast  falsely  accused 
or  honestly  desiring  to  do  better.  One  night  he  was 


32  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

accosted  by  a  woman  of  the  street  here  on  the  Com 
mon  Mall.  Looking  in  his  pure  face  she  saw  her 
mistake  and  apologized.  Mr.  Phillips  drew  her  on 
to  talk,  walked  back  and  forth  with  her  under  the 
elms  until  he  had  her  story,  then  took  her  to  a  home 
where  she  became  the  woman  God  intended  her  to  be. 

"Douglas,  Douglas,  tender  and  true!" 

If  we  had  a  right  to  draw  aside  the  curtain  that  hides 
his  home  life,  what  an  example  of  chivalrous  devotion 
would  be  brought  to  view! — devotion  not  without  its 
rich  reward,  since  from  the  seclusion  of  that  sick 
chamber  came  the  highest  inspiration  to  heroic  words 
and  deeds. 

Not  many  men  deserve  to  be  remembered  on  their 
hundredth  birthday;  but  Wendell  Phillips's  second 
centennial  may  be  better  observed  than  his  first.  We 
may  be  sure  his  name  will  be  written  higher  a  hun 
dred  years  hence  than  it  is  today.  When  the  reforms 
he  advocated  have  become  accomplished  facts,  when 
prisons  have  been  turned  into  moral  hospitals,  when 
society  has  learned  to  erect  "a  guidepost  at  the  be 
ginning  of  the  road  instead  of  a  gallows  at  the  end 
of  it,"  when  cities  have  sloughed  off  the  grogshop 
and  the  brothel,  when  woman  has  been  summoned 
into  civil  life  and  has  become  the  yokefellow  of  man, 
no  longer  his  plaything  or  his  drudge,  when  the  hands 
that  create  the  wealth  of  the  world  have  learned  to 
hold  it  and  to  handle  it  for  the  good  of  all,  and  every 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  33 

child  born  in  America  has  an  equal  chance  in  life, 
when  the  dark-browed  multitudes  for  whom  he  toiled 
and  suffered  have  joined  the  enfranchised  millions 
that  are  yet  to  trample  all  oppression  under  their 
feet — do  you  think  that  in  that  day  the  name  of 
Wendell  Phillips  is  likely  to  be  forgotten?  What 
ever  we  may  say,  do  you  imagine  it  will  be  the  judg 
ment  of  coming  times  that  he  condemned  the  tyrants 
of  his  own  age  too  severely? 

The  word  of  the  Lord  came  to  Wendell  Phillips, 
as  to  the  prophets  in  all  ages,  "Cry  aloud  and  spare 
not!"  Thank  God,  he  did  not  spare!  Thank  God 
for  every  bitter,  biting,  blasting  speech  that  woke  a 
sluggard  land  to  its  duty  and  made  the  ears  of  recre 
ant  statesmen  tingle  with  shame !  Would  that  in  this 
day  another  might  arise  like  unto  him,  so  gifted,  so 
consecrated,  so  fearless,  so  mighty  in  the  power  of  the 
Spirit,  to  rebuke  the  cowards  and  oppressors  of  our 
time.  Wrong  still  walks  the  earth,  the  expectation 
of  the  poor  perishes,  and  the  needy  are  forgotten. 
Oh  that  he  himself  were  here  to  defend  the  mighty 
bulwarks  of  liberty  he  labored  to  build  up  within  the 
Constitution !  Oh  that  he  were  here  to  shame  his  own 
race  into  honest  dealing  with  the  black — to  lay  open 
to  scorn  the  sneaking  cowardice  that  makes  laws  to 
give  white  ignorance  and  vice  the  ballot  and  deny  it 
to  the  black,  not  daring  to  meet  its  rival  in  the  open 
field  and  lay  down  one  equal  test  for  all,  but  skulking 
behind  "grandfather  clauses,"  while  it  taxes  the  black 


34  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

man  for  parks  and  libraries  and  shuts  him  out  from 
both!  Oh  that  he  were  here  to  damn  as  it  deserves 
the  hellish  hatred  that,  North  as  well  as  South,  con 
demns  men  unheard  because  they  are  black,  tortures 
innocent  and  guilty  at  the  stake,  yes,  even  in  the 
Quaker  commonwealth,  drags  the  wounded  black  boy 
from  the  hospital  on  his  pallet  and  burns  him  in  his 
blood — the  shameless  perjury  that  acquits  the  lynch- 
ers,  the  brazen  impudence  that  finds  unwritten  law  to 
clear  cold-blooded  murder  with  the  sanction  of  the 
court!  Oh  that  he  were  here  to  find  some  fitting 
name  for  states  that,  pretending  to  be  democratic, 
hold  seats  in  Congress  for  millions  of  men  whose 
political  rights  they  have  villainously  filched  away, 
voting  now,  not  as  in  old  days  for  three-fifths  of  the 
Negroes,  but  for  all !  He  should  be  here  to  pour  con 
tempt  upon  communities  that  let  the  hands  of  infants 
do  their  work,  rob  the  schoolhouse  and  the  playfield 
to  run  the  factory,  and  do  not  wince  when  they 

"Hear  the  children  weeping,  O  my  brothers, 
Ere  the  sorrow  comes  with  years," — 

the  sodden  dullness  that  suffers  greed  and  cunning  to 
strike  hands  and  tax  the  bread  and  meat,  the  coal  and 
clothing  of  millions  to  fill  the  pockets  of  a  few — the 
purblind  prejudice  that  still  holds  woman  back  from 
her  part  in  civic  life  while  it  leaves  the  grogshop  and 
the  brothel  free  to  rot  the  heart  out  of  great  cities! 
Oh  that  he  would  come  and  unfrock  those  time-serv- 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  35 

ing  priests  that  have  no  word  for  the  giant  iniquities 
of  their  day,  dumb  dogs  that  will  not  bark  when  the 
thief  is  climbing  into  the  fold!   Would  that  he  could 
wield  once  more  the  fearful  lash  that  made  bribed 
statesmen  cringe  and  tremble  and  the  backs  of  apos 
tate  judges  smart  under  their  robes!    But  not  to  re 
buke  only — would  that  he  were  with  us  now  to  cheer 
and  lead!   One  blast  upon  that  silver  bugle  would  be 
worth  a  hundred  men.    The  battle  has  moved  onward ; 
there  are  fighters  in  the  field.    It  is  not  an  hour  for 
curse  or  lamentation.    It  is  an  hour  for  the  consecra 
tion  of  knighthood,  for  vigil,  and  for  vow.    We  do  / 
not  come  to  praise  you,  Wendell  Phillips ;  you  have  V 
received  already  your   eternal   great  reward.     We    J 
have  come  to  catch  the  glow  of  your  great  spirit    L 
and  resolve  to  make  our  lives  like  yours.    Here,  where      / 
a  century  ago  your  life  began,  we  are  gathered  to    / 
celebrate  your  coming  with  deep  thanksgiving  and 
with  solemn  joy,   pledging  ourselves   anew  to   the 
grand  purpose  to  which  your  life  was  devoted — a 
war  against  all  oppression,  for  the  liberty  of  all ! 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

Teach  me,  dread  boughs, 

Where  from  your  twigs  the  sad  Muse  culls  her  leaves, 
When  she  a  long-neglected  garland  weaves, 

To  bind  great  brows. 

Give  no  leaf  less 

Than  his  unlaureled  temples  should  have  worn: 
So  may  his  spirit  pass  me  not  in  scorn, 

But  turn  and  bless. 

I  fondly  dream ! 

How  could  my  crown,  though  rich  with  crust  and  stain 
From  tears  of  sacred  sorrow,  win  such  gain — 

That  smile  supreme? 

Short-stemmed  and  curt 

His  wreath  should  be,  and  braided  by  strong  hands, 
Hindered  with  sword-hilt,  while  the  braider  stands 

With  loin  upgirt. 

Too  late  to  urge 

Thy  tardy  crown.    Draw  back,  O  Northern  blond! 
Let  black  hands  take  to  bind  the  Southern  frond, 

A  severed  scourge! 

37 


38  WENDELL  PHILLIPS 

Haughty  and  high, 

And  deaf  to  all  the  thunders  of  the  throng, 
He  heard  the  lowest  whisper  of  his  wrong 

The  slave  could  sigh. 

In  some  pent  street, 
O  prophet-slaying  city  of  his  care, 
Pour  out  thine  eyes,  loose  thy  repentant  hair, 

And  kiss  his  feet ! 

Little  it  is 

That  thou  canst  pay,  yet  pay  this  recompense: 
All  tongues  henceforth  shall  give  thine  ears  offence 

Remembering  his: 

All  grace  shall  tease 

The  flush  of  shame  to  thine  averted  cheek; 
Best  Greek  shall  mind  thee  of  one  greater  Greek, 

More  godlike  ease — 

Blessing  and  blight, 

A  bitter  drop  beneath  the  bee-kissed  lips, 
Hyperion's  anger  passing  to  eclipse 

And  arrow-flight! 

Thou  didst  not  spare: 
Thy  foot  is  on  his  violated  door; 
Therefore  the  mantle  that  his  shoulders  wore 

None  hence  shall  wear. 

Above  thy  choice, 

This  Coriolanus  of  the  people's  wars 
Could  never  strip  his  brawn  and  show  his  scars 

To  beg  thy  voice. 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  39 

Struck  by  death's  dart 
(In  all  the  strain  of  conflict  unconfessed) , 
He  carried  through  the  years  that  wounded  breast, 

That  poignant  heart. 

Last  from  the  fight, 

So  moves  the  lion,  with  unhasting  stride, 
Dragging  the  slant  spear,  broken  in  his  side — 

And  gains  the  height ! 


OTenbeli 
Centenary 

1811-1911 


WENDELL    PHILLIPS 

BORN  NOVEMBKR  29,  1811 
DIED  FEBRUARY   L>,   1884 


HE  stood  upon  the  world's  broad  threshold;   wide 
The  din  of  battle  and   of  slaughter  rose; 
He  sa\v  God   stand   upon   the   weaker  side, 
That  sank   in   seeming  loss  before  its  foes: 
Many   there   were   who   made  great  haste  and  sold 
Unto  the  cunning  enemy  their  swords, 
He  scorned  their  gifts   of  fame,  and   power,  and  gold, 
And,  underneath  their  soft  and  flowery  words, 
Heard  the  cold   serpent  hiss;   therefore  he  went 
And  humbly  joined  him   to  the   weaker  part, 
Fanatic  named,  and   fool,  yet   well  content 
So  he  could  be  the  nearer  to   God's  heart, 
And  feel  its  solemn   pulses  sending  blood 
Through  all  the  widespread   veins  of  endless  good. 

J.    R.    LOWELL,    1843 


THERE,  with  one  hand  behind  his  back, 
Stands  PHILLIPS,  buttoned  in  a  sack, 
Our  Attic  orator,  our  Chatham ; 
Old  fogies,  when  he  lightens  at  'em, 
Shrivel  like  leaves;   to  him  'tis  granted 
Always  to  say  the  word  that's  wanted, 
So  that  he  seems  but  speaking  clearer 
The  tiptoe  thought  of  every  hearer ; 
Each  flash  his  brooding  heart  lets  fall 
Fires  what's  combustible  in  all, 
And  sends  the  applauses  bursting  in 
Like  an  exploded  magazine. 
His  eloquence  no  frothy  show, 
The  gutter's  street-polluted  flow, 
No  Mississippi's  yellow  flood 
Whose  shoalness  can't  be  seen  for  mud ;  — 
So  simply  clear,  serenely  deep, 
So  silent-strong  its  graceful  sweep, 
None  measures  its  unrippling  force 
Who  has  not  striven  to  stem  its  course ; 
How  fare  their  barques  who  think  to  play 
With  smooth  Niagara's  mane  of  spray, 
Let  Austin's  total  shipwreck  say. 


J.    R.    LOWELL,    1846 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS 

From  a  photograph  about  1863 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  was  born  in  the  brick  mansion 
built  by  his  father,  John  Phillips  (first  Mayor  of  Boston), 
on  the  lower  corner  of  Walnut  and  Beacon  Streets,  overlooking 
Boston  Common.  After  his  father's  death  (1823)  he  and  his 
mother  resided  for  some  years  in  a  dwelling  house  on  the  site  of 
the  Athenaeum,  between  Beacon  Street  and  the  Old  Granary 
Burying  Ground. 


"He  was  a  thorough  Bostonian,  too,  and  his  anti-slavery 
enthusiasm  never  rose  quite  so  high  as  when  blended  with  local 
patriotism.  No  one  who  heard  it  can  ever  forget  the  thrilling 
modulation  of  his  voice  when  he  said,  at  some  special  crisis  of 
the  anti -slavery  agitation, — 

"  '  I  love  inexpressibly  these  streets  of  Boston,  over  whose 
pavements  my  mother  held  up  tenderly  my  baby  feet;  and  if 
God  grants  me  time  enough,  I  will  make  them  too  pure  to  bear 
the  footsteps  of  a  slave !  ' 

T.     W.     HlGCilNSON 


BIRTHPLACE   OF   WENDELL   PHILLIPS 


TN  November,  1841,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Phillips  moved  into  the 
•1  modest  brick  house  numbered  26  Essex  Street,  which  remained 
their  home  for  more  than  forty  years.  It  was  of  tiny  dimensions, 
barely  large  enough  for  the  accommodation  of  themselves  and 
the  necessary  servants.  A  dining-room  and  kitchen  were  on  the 
first  floor.  On  the  second  a  double  parlor  of  diminutive  size,  but 
bright  and  sunny,  made  a  cheerful  study,  and  above  it,  on  the 
southern  front  of  the  house,  was  Mrs.  Phillips's  chamber  during 
her  long  years  of  invalidism.  From  her  windows  she  could  look 
out,  during  the  turbulent  winter  of  1860-61,  upon  the  crowds 
(composed  of  both  friends  and  mobocrats)  that  followed  Mr. 
Phillips  home  from  his  Sunday  morning  discourses  at  Music  Hall 
and  gathered  in  a  surging  mass  before  the  house. 

The  vignette  on  the  second  cover  page  is  reproduced  from  a 
photograph  (taken  in  1882)  of  Mr.  Phillips  standing  in  his  door 
way  —  a  very  characteristic  likeness.  The  front  door  of  the 
house  is  now  preserved  in  the  Old  State  House  by  the  Bostonian 
Society. 

The  portrait  of  Mr.  Phillips  on  the  front  cover  page  is  from 
a  photograph  taken  about  1859,  at  the  age  of  forty-eight. 


THE   HOME   OF   WENDELL   PHILLIPS 

26  Essex  Street,  Boston 
(Mr.  Phillips  is  shown  just  entering  the  door) 


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From  an  etching  l>y  J.  Andrews,  IS 


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From  a  knife-cut  portrait  made  in  London  in  1839 


THEN  began  an  agitation  which  for  the  marvel  of  its  origin, 
the  majesty  of  its  purpose,  the  earnestness,  unselfishness, 
and  ability  of  its  appeals,  the  vigor  of  its  assault,  the  deep, 
national  convulsion  it  caused,  the  vast  and  beneficent  changes  it 
wrought,  and  its  widespread,  indirect  influence  on  all  kindred 
moral  questions,  is  without  a  parallel  in  history  since  Luther. 

WEXDELL  PHILLIPS,  at  Garrison's  funeral,   1879 


I  claim  for  the  anti-slavery  movement  that,  looking  back 
over  its  whole  course,  and  considering  the  men  connected  with  it 
in  the  mass,  it  has  been  marked  by  sound  judgment,  unerring 
foresight,  the  most  sagacious  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  the 
strictest  self-discipline,  the  most  thorough  research,  and  an 
amount  of  patient  and  manly  argument  addressed  to  the  con 
science  and  intellect  of  the  nation,  such  as  no  other  cause  of  the 
kind,  in  England  or  this  country,  has  ever  offered. 

WENDELL  PHILLIPS,  1853 


(George  Thompson,  the  eloquent  English  ally  of  the  American 
abolitionists,  thrice  visited  the  United  States,  in  1834,  1851,  and 
1864,  and  was  hotly  mobbed  during  his  first  two  visits.  On  his  third 
visit  he  witnessed  the  abolition  of  slavery  and  was  publicly  honored 
for  his  unselfish  labours.) 


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NONE  know  what  it  is  to  live  till  they  redeem  life  from  its 
seeming  monotony  by  laying  it  a  sacrifice  on  the  altar  of 
some  great  cause. 

The  agitator  must  stand  outside  of  organi/ation,  with  no 
bread  to  earn,  no  candidate  to  elect,  no  party  to  save,  no  object 
but  the  truth, —  to  tear  a  question  open  and  riddle  it  with  light. 


Power,    ability,    influence,    character,  virtue,  are  only  trusts 
with   which  to   serve  our  time. 


The  broadest  and  most  far-sighted  intellect  is  utterly  unable 
to  foresee  the  ultimate  consequences  of  any  great  social  change. 
Ask  yourself,  on  all  such  occasions,  if  there  be  any  element  of 
right  and  wrong  in  the  question,  any  principle  of  clear,  natural 
justice  that  turns  the  scale.  If  so,  take  your  part  with  the  per 
fect  and  abstract  right,  and  trust  God  to  see  that  it  shall  prove 
the  expedient. 

WENDELL  PHILLIPS 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS 
From  a  photograph  by  ,1 .   W.  Black,  about  1875 


rr^O  be  as  good  as  our  fathers  we  must  be  better. 

We  must  never  allow  the  siren  voice  of  our  tastes  to  drown 
the  cry  of  another's  necessities. 

It  is  safe  to  leave  man  with  all  the  rights  God  gave  him. 

Labor,  the  creator  of  wealth,  is  entitled  to  all  it  creates. 
Before  the  movement  stops,  every  child  born  in  America  must 
have  an  equal  chance  in  life. 

While  woman  is  admitted  to  the  gallows,  the  jail,  and  the 
tax  list,  we  have  no  right  to  debar  her  from  the  ballot  box. 

Genius  can  mould  no  marble  so  speaking  as  the  spot  where 
a  brave  man  stood  or  the  scene  where  he  labored. 

WENDELL  PHILLIPS 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS 

From  a  photograph  by  Sarony,  about  1880 


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